Written 23rd March – who knows, maybe I’ll get April’s update up in April!
This year is the year of everything, I decided. We had loads of different seeds to use up (most of them out-of-date…oops…) and I’ve been reading up about the joys of heirloom and heritage crops where you can gather your own seed.
I am itching to get started growing my own seed bank but figured it would be wasteful to not use the seeds I have, even if they are hybrids and F1s and all the stuff that means I can’t make lots of babies out of them.
So, as I said, everything gets planted. So far, that hasn’t actually given me very many seedlings. It appears not all seeds can go out of date and still be expected to produce a plant. Sigh. We have some lovely dwarf broad bean plants (I’ve already planted them out to see if I can beat the black fly) and a few tomato plants and that’s about it.
The excitement a toddler gets from seeing seeds growing! We have to check every day…
Today Georgie and I planted squash, beetroot, leeks, salad leaves, pumpkins, purple sprouting broccoli (incidentally – did you know that if you accidently forget to pull it out from the year before, it can resprout and give you even more broccoli?!), and I’m sure there’s something else in there that I’ve forgotten. I’m not holding my breath for great crops from them but you never know! Georgie had great fun planting them, if nothing else! (Courgettes! That was the other thing.)
My potatoes (smiles a little too proudly) are chitting on our windowsill. They don’t appear to be doing very much which is worrying me as I was hoping to plant them soon… And I’ve got to read up (again, because I’ve forgotten what I read last year) whether I’m allowed to cut them in half if I have more than one…shoot (yes, I did Google it *hangs head in shame*) coming out of a seed potato. I’m sure I have before.
Right, enough talking, I’d better actually water my plants! I may be a newbie to all of this but I DO know that watering is vital.
Bleu de solaise (leeks) – seeds from the Real Seeds Company. Germinated beautifully. Purple sprouting broccoli, our long awaited courgettes Beetroot (Georgie got very enthusiastic planting these. We have a LOT of seedlings).
PLANTING TO DATE (end of March):
January
Broad beans (Bunyards Exhibition) – germinated by the end of Jan and planted out end of Feb. My success story (well, assuming we get beans!)!
Leeks (Musselburgh) – 1 sprouted. Need to plant more.
Peas (Oregon Sugar Pod) – total failure. Need to try again.
Radishes (Rahanus Sativus – a cheap packet I’d got from Lidls ages ago!) – sprouted and then haven’t done anything massively.
Spinach (Matador) – seeds dead.
Sweet peas – sprouted beautifully. The one crop I can’t eat and I seem to be able to do a good job of! Typical! At least we’ll starve to death in a sweet smelling house…
Tomatoes (Ailsa craig and Cerise) – some success. They aren’t doing anything though. Should they be or did I plant too early?!
Onions (Rijisburger) – utter flop.
And I chitted my potatoes (Purple fir apple and Rocket) – slow starters?!
Didn’t get round to pruning the fruit trees and bushes. Thanks, morning sickness.
February
Cucumbers (Marketmore and Diva) – zilch.
Nastursium – beautiful. Anyone else discovering a theme here? I can grow flowers but not vegetables?!
Spinach – as successful as last time. We won’t be eating any soon.
Round lettuce – lettuce hates me. Stubbornly refusing to germinate.
Still no pruning. Still awful morning sickness.
March
Forget the first three weeks of the month. They don’t exist. I’m blaming morning sickness, anemia, sciatica (oh, isn’t pregnancy fun?!), and a sad family event.
Lettuce – is planted. I’ll update you if this lot decides to grow. It better. *stares intently at the propagator*
Courgettes – finished off three packs of seeds! (Defender (6 seeds), Black beauty (2 seeds), and All green bush (19 seeds)). We like courgettes so here’s hoping something germinates!
Squash (Winter Golden Hubbard and Butternut Butterfly) – Georgie very carefully planted these ones so they have no excuse!
Sprouting broccoli – we may have a lot of this. Turns out the seeds are quite small and if you hand the packet to your 20 month old daughter, she just tips it over the seed tray. Fair enough.
Pumpkin (Big Max) – Also a beautiful size for Georgie to plant.
Leeks (Bleu de Solaise) – a gift from my amazing sister-in-law who sent me some of hers. Total God-thing because I’ve been meaning to order some for AGES and didn’t get round to it and sat down to plant March’s seeds today, kicked myself for forgetting, then got these in the post. Here’s hoping they grow better than the Musselburgh did! I do not count 1 seed out of many successful! Seeds from Real Seed Company.
Morning sickness still a pig, sciatica less of a pig as long as I do my stretches, anaemia not fixed yet.
Georgie LOVES looking at the seeds/seedlings daily to see the change!
a short-haired hippy 
Erm . . would that be Pink Fir Apple potatoes – or do you have a new variety I haven’t seen yet? Only jealous ‘cos my planting is way behind yours!
Hmm, yes, they may be Pink Fir Apple… They aren’t chitting/growing very well. 😦 The Rocket is doing better and should be in the ground already but isn’t…
And you don’t need to be jealous – you have a magic greenhouse that means you’ll overtake me very quickly!!
Love your blog, Becky…. as you seem successful with flowers, try Canterbury Bells (Campanula Medium) had the most amazing show last year – three foot high plants with massive large blue bells Have just germinated seeds. Can’t eat them, but you can feast your eyes.
Ooh, thank you for the tip!! I just Googled them and they look absolutely gorgeous!